Time to go Inside

The horns didn’t blow but one wife shouted as her husband’s barns came tumbling down in the back pasture. I was happy to see the barns go; I wasn’t thrilled at the junk that somersaulted out of them. My husband, however, had more fun than a kid at the Austin County Fair as he stumbled across toys and tools and memories long buried in the barn.

The barns fell, but so did Ian’s disposition when I “encouraged” him to let our helpers carry off the junk -- encouraged, then begged, then whined -- bad move for a woman married to a man who has lived on the same corner for most of his 60 years, the land of his father and grandfather and so on. Proud of his Old 300 Stephen F. Austin connection, he loves his land, and he has a hard time letting go of the stuff even if it’s rotten and mildewed and broken. Sorry – not stuff, treasures. It’s all perspective, right? Thirty years ago when Ian and a friend were cleaning out the house we were to restore, they traveled one morning to the dump to unload and were not seen or heard from for the remainder of the day. Something in the water, I used to say. Bellville boys and their toys and treasures.

So encouraging Ian to throw it all away was a bad call. By now, I should have known how to deal with the junk in our lives.  

“Surely this could go,” I pleaded, picking up a rusted, smashed, tin-like contraption even as I picked up on the whoosh of air escaping from his lungs and the look of shock on his face. “That’s the meter I used for a space helmet!”

In other words, get out of here. His immediate thoughts, I’m sure, thoughts soon articulated as he looked at me and sternly stated with the Ian-look that I know too well:  “I think it’s time for you to go inside now.”

Enough said. I did. I love my husband. I’d like to make 35 years.

It took a month. A month of remembering. A month of looking and sorting and tossing and saving before he could do it.

He had to do it in his own way and in his own time.

Bugging him about it made it worse. Presenting logical reasons on why it should go made it worse. Worrying about the neighbors made it worse. It was his junk, not mine. He had to do it in his own time and in his own way. I just needed to go inside and let him deal with what needed to be done.

Sounds a lot like praying for others, doesn’t it? We want to help. We share and reason and worry and sympathize and even get mad. But the junk isn’t ours; it’s theirs. And going inside to pray is one way God lets us truly help.  

A few minutes ago, Ian walked into the room and asked me what I was writing about.   

“You, of course!” I said.

Our joke has always been that if I wasn’t married to him, I wouldn’t have anything to write about! And luckily, he doesn’t mind. We have lots of junk to share.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will” (Romans 8:26-27 NIV).

“And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayer and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18 NIV).

“If you, then, thou you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11 NIV).

 There it goes!